Fish Monger

2022 | Acrylic On Canvas, Stretched On Wood Frame

Over the past year the idea of work has plagued my mind. What is proper work? Does painting count as work? How do you define an essential worker? Is some work better than other work? The answer came when I met this fish monger. Day in day out this man would gut and de-scale fish for clients. One by one, 12hrs a day. And I found a sort of reverence in his focus. His hands would move so fast you would barely see the knife. Just blurs of steel and scales. This man found meaning in his task no matter how inconsequential others saw it as. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"- MLK

See more artwork by Gitori Gwiza